Saudi airstrikes on Yemen amount to war crimes: HRW

A boy and his sisters watch graffiti artists spray on a wall, commemorating the victims who were killed in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Monday, May 18, 2015. Saudi-led airstrikes targeting Yemen's Shiite rebels resumed early on Monday in the southern port city of Aden after a five-day truce expired amid talks on the war-torn country's future that were boycotted by the rebels. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced the air raids conducted by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen as “war crimes,” calling on the United Nations to launch an investigation into the fatal strikes.

The rights organization cited on Tuesday five “apparently unlawful” Saudi aerial assaults in Yemen between June 9 and August 4, which killed 39 civilians, among them 26 children.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s repeated promises to conduct its airstrikes lawfully are not sparing Yemeni children from unlawful attacks,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at HRW, adding that the attacks “are still wiping out entire families” in Yemen.

“These latest airstrikes and their horrible toll on children should galvanize the Human Rights Council to denounce and act to investigate war crimes, and ensure that those responsible are held to account,” she noted.

The period examined in the HRW report does not cover a deadly Saudi air raid on August 23 against a Sana’a hotel, which left some 60 civilians dead.

At least 14 Yemenis also lost their lives days later in similar Saudi strikes against the Faj Attan district on the outskirts of the capital.

Whitson further urged the UN Human Rights Council member states “to support a credible international inquiry” into civilian deaths in Yemen